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January 19th National Day of Action to Protect Our Schools from Trump

Thursday, January 19th -- the day before inauguration day -- is a national day of action to defend our schools from Donald Trump and his proposed Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. DeVos is a lobbyist for privatized education and has moved millions of dollars to right wing efforts to gut public schools, especially in urban communities of color.

Join the Our City Our Schools coalition for two related actions on Thursday, January 19th as we launch our resistance to Trump’s education agenda. RSVP to each action by clicking on the map:

3:30PM: Fund Schools Not Wall Street at City Hall (15th and Market) to demand Wells Fargo pay their fair share back to the Philadelphia Schools -- http://bit.ly/FundSchoolsNotWallSt

We demand: local control of our schools and the abolishment of the School Reform Commission, corporations pay their fair share for education, and our schools become solidarity spaces against deportations and racism.

Trump’s education policies spell disaster for our schools, our students, our families and our communities. Neither Trump nor DeVos went to or sent their children to public schools. Their policies are meant to benefit the 1% and increase profits for their friends -- not work to give our children, particularly Black and Brown children, the education they deserve and need.

For our Philadelphia schools to survive Trump, we need to be the ones making the decisions over our schools -- not Donald Trump, nor his Republican friends in Pennsylvania legislature. This means we need to get rid of the state-appointed School Reform Commission and return our schools to local control, where parents, teachers and community members can get a real say in how our schools run and operate. In the next few months, we will have a an opportunity to abolish the School Reform Commission once and for all. With three new members of the SRC, we look forward to Chair Joyce Wilkerson bringing to the floor the vote to abolish in the next few months.

Our schools have been robbed by billionaire corporations -- and with a cabinet filled with the Wall Street 1%, we can only expect more attempts at corporate handouts. Here in Philadelphia, Wells Fargo and other banks have taken over $162 million from the Philadelphia schools. Recently, Wells Fargo has been under scrutiny for opening over 2 million fake accounts under customers names without their consent, particularly targeting non-English speaking customers. Wells is also heavily invested in the Dakota Access Pipeline. Native leaders from across the world have called on Wells to end its financial support of the pipeline as it steals Native American land and threatens the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

As Trump makes his plans to try to deport undocumented people, we need the School Reform Commission to pledge to make our schools solidarity spaces so that all children can learn without the fear of deportations. Additionally our schools need to reassure students of color, religious minorities and LGBTQ youth that they will be protected following Trump's hate filled campaign. We will call on the SRC at their meeting to pledge no cooperation with ICE or other deportation attempts. More can be found here: tinyurl.com/PhillySchoolSolidarityPetition

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